Friday, January 21, 2011

Review: Across the Universe

Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Synopsis (From Goodreads):A love out of time. A spaceship built of secrets and murder. Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.

Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone-one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship-tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn't do something soon, her parents will be next.

Now Amy must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there's only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.

After making one of the most challenging decisions of her life, Amy says goodbye to her friends and everything she has known on earth to be frozen for 300 years and travel across the universe to another planet. Elder, a boy from another generation, is destined to be the ruler of the ship, Godspeed. When Amy is accidentally unfrozen, she doesn't know who to trust. Everything about the society on the ship is different and she feels alone. When Elder and Amy realise that someone is unplugging the frozen civilisation, and killing them, on purpose, they have to distinguish between the truths and the lies that have been created on the ship, and work out who the murderer is before more victims are defrosted.

In an amazing debut, Beth Revis has created an intriguing murder-mystery that has plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing until the end. Even though everyone is trapped aboard the ship, there's still plenty of deceit and lies to uncover to set up an intricate mystery.

I loved Amy. Amy is shown to be a very active and healthy teenage girl who cannot sit still and loves to be in open spaces. By giving her the hobby of long distance running was a great way to show how really trapped she is in the floating artificial world. Her journey is very realistic as she comes to realise that, when in space, there is nowhere to run.

By showing both the perspectives of Amy and Elder, it was easy to see the ship through the eyes of an insider as well as a foreigner. This made the plot more interesting since Elder was the one uncovering the lies, while Amy was left with a feeling that something wasn't right on the ship.

I don't usually read sci-fi, but the characters created were all realistic and honest, and it was easy to picture the world aboard Godspeed. Once I started I didn't want to stop.

Cover: I loved this cover. It doesn't lie, it shows the reader that they are in for a sci-fi set amongst the stars, and that honesty is what makes it great. It's also beautiful, and the two characters in shadow shows an eerily romantic scene.

Nice review! Can't wait to read this book. Yesterday I was in the book store and came across it and the cover is completely stunning. I wanted to buy it and take it home with me because of that dang cover, but I'm in no-book-buying band until I get through the huge pile I already have to read. But hopefully soon!